Politics and intrigue

Slide from US President Barack Obama’s 6th State of the Union address.

The New Year got off to political start, with robotics featuring high on the agenda for many world leaders this January. In his State of the Union address, US President Barack Obama spoke about how new technology can benefit the economy, specifically referring to the value of new robotic prosthetics and developments in space exploration, and encouraging Americans “to win the race for the kind of discoveries that unleash new jobs”. And at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, world leaders discussed the impact of robotics, AI and Big Data and their potential to disrupt the global economy.

While leaders were preparing to discuss AI at the WEF in the public eye, the Future of Life Institute (FLI) – a privately funded non-profit whose mission is to “mitigate existential risks facing humanity” – held a closed (some would say ‘secretive‘) conference in early January to discuss AI safety. The speakers roster was a who’s who list of tech and AI influencers, including Demis Hassabis, Thomas Dietterich, Erik Brynjolfsson, Nick Bostrom, Peter Norvig, Stuart Russell, and Elon Musk, and the goal of the conference was to identify promising research directions that will “maximize the future benefits of AI while avoiding pitfalls.” (The conference was closed to the media in order “to facilitate candid and constructive discussions”, however, some of the speaker’s presentations can now be found online here.) Following the conference, the FLI issued an open letter that outlined research priorities for robust and beneficial Artificial Intelligence. While the open letter itself seemed to illustrate a desire on the part of those working in AI to hold themselves to high ethical standards, it generated a flurry of hyped headlines from a jilted media that had been left to speculate in the vacuum. Days later, Elon Musk added to the media frenzy by donating $10 million to fund a global research program aimed at keeping AI beneficial to humanity, and Tom Dietterich and Eric Horvitz of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) published an article discussing the risks of advancements in AI, arguing that “we must not put AI algorithms in control of potentially-dangerous systems until we can provide a high degree of assurance that they will behave safely and properly”. Meanwhile, Lee Gomes wrote that the Turing test is not robust enough to test the intelligence of computer programmes and welcomed the efforts by a group of roboticists now looking into alternatives.

Lifting the AI veil

With all the AI intrigue afoot, it’s refreshing to note that January also brought forth two new efforts to demystify the topic. Robohub’s newest syndicated podcast, Talking Machines, will be bringing listeners clear conversations with experts in the field of AI. Since kicking off on January 1, the podcast has featured interviews with Ilya Sutskever, who thinks that a little bit of magical thinking is crucial to work in AI, and Kevin Murphy, who spoke about how to learn about machine learning. Look for new episodes every other Thursday.

The AAAI video competition was also held this month in Austin, Texas, to spread the word about research and applications in AI through exciting educational videos. The Best Video award went to the Cowriter Project, an initiative through which children learn to write by teaching a robot to write.

Other winners included a video about adaptive learning through a Mario game (People’s Choice Award) and a video about self-organising collective decisions in swarms (Best Student Video).

Re-usable space tech: One step closer

autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS)

This month, SpaceX’s 7th Dragon mission successfully sent another spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) – the fifth successful dock under NASA’s CRS program. More remarkable was SpaceX’s ambitious attempt to return the first stage of the Falcon9 rocket back to earth. The rocket performed a successful re-orientation maneuver and controlled decent, and almost landed as intended on an unmanned ocean barge. Unfortunately the rocket lost control – possibly due to insufficient hydraulic fluid – just before the final touchdown and was lost at sea. Although the project did not achieve its ultimate goal of a safe landing, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hailed the mission an overall success.

The rise of the drone

More than a dozen agents searching WH north lawn, w/ flashlights into the bushes. Source: Nedra Pickler.

As things are looking up for most robotics markets around the world and drones are quickly becoming one of the most sought after consumer products, it’s no wonder then that Scott Mayerowitz compared today’s drone market to Silicon Valley in its early days, suggesting that drones will soon become a permanent fixture in our lives.

Meanwhile in the lab…

A team from EPFL and NCCR Robotics in Switzerland working on a spinal cord implant to treat paralysis have reported on a major breakthrough, publishing proof that their device, the e-dura implant, is viable for months in animals. The team is now moving on to the next stage of research, which will involve testing of the implant in human subjects.

In other research news, a team from the University of Maryland and NICTA, Australia, is teaching robots how to cook by showing them YouTube videos of cooking shows.

Robotainment

Spare Parts opened January 16th in US theatres.

2015 is promising to be a big year for entertainment with, by and about robots. The latest in a series of movies tackling robot-related topic is a feel-good Hollywood movie called Spare Parts, about a group of young immigrants who against all odds win a major US robotics contest. While the movie concludes on a happy note, the real life ending is less positive, as highlighted in the NY times by the story’s author.

In other robotainment news, CBC launched a new documentary called Robotize Me, which explores our desire to develop intelligent and emotional machines. It turns out that Roboticize me is co-hosted by RoboThespian, which was just featured this month on the Robots Podcast.